Im Kreis der Acht

What happened tot he story? It starts to build, then just goes phhhht.

It wasn't scary, it wasn't chilling or tense or horror.

It was actually boring and lacked any real anything.

Characters offered nothing of interest, story didn't build up, overall, it just didn't get off the ground to go anywhere of interest.

This was 2 or 3 rewrites short of being a thriller or a drama or anything.

The opening scene was OK, but then it just left you there...with this girl driving in a car, moving into a new building and all fizzled away.

Maybe the next script will be a better movie.

The film originally seemed interesting but by the finale I started thinking perhaps there was no point.

I like when films don't feel they must spoon-feed the audience information about what's happening. People are generally reasonably smart and movies claiming to be smarter often end up insufferable.

However this movie was different. It didn't shove information up the audience's nose, but as the credits rolled it seemed as though the movie existed simply to appear intelligent without actually being intelligent. I'm not sure even the people who wrote this knew/decided what the story was. I only know its nothing I'd watch again

From the description on the TV guide, this looked like it might be interesting. Unfortunately you cannot believe everything you read. The concept was quite good, however, the execution didn't match up by a long chalk. I'll explain what I mean later, but here's a brief summary first (summary haters and those that don't wish to know anything about the plot please help Jessica move in while I write the next paragraph).

Jessica is moving into her first apartment in the big city (Los Angeles in this case). Driving through the streets she's full of optimism and looking forward to her new surroundings. Outside the building, the Dante, she meets Evan, an attractive young man who helps her with her stuff. The building manager, Ed, is a bit odd, but likable enough, although he's a bit particular about tenants going into his 'File Room'. Having moved in, Jessica is then visited by several of the other occupants, an odd bunch to say the least. They are all very insistent that she joins them for a roof-top party to celebrate the New Year. And then strange things begin to happen, Jessica begins to see the other residents murdered, one by one. Nobody seems concerned about this and so she goes to Evan to try and get some answers. I'll leave it there and I've probably made it sound a lot better than it really is.

This film has the look and feel of a student short that got made into a feature. It all seems very amateurish, everything from the cinematography, to the sound, to the acting seems to have had little thought to it. Nobody on screen really deserves a mention, but I will name a few so you'll know who's responsible. If anything, John Bishop was the best performer as Ed, but he wasn't great, Ryan Doom (great name!) was adequate as Evan and Austin Highsmith was OK, I guess, as Jessica.

I feel I've been a little generous with my score (below), but the concept behind this very poor film was actually quite good. The trouble is, little, or no, thought went into the execution. Maybe some of it could be blamed on budget restrictions, but I've seen much better than this made for a lot less. I think you can probably guess what comes next… definitely NOT recommended… You have been warned.

My score: 4.1/10

You know there are two types of movie watchers out there. Passive watchers who kind of just put a movie in and if the mood,day,lighting and everything is right they like it. The problem is with these people when they don;t pay attention to them a movie is "flawed" or "filled with plot holes". These are the people that, for whatever reason have short attention spans and spend more time trying to find similarities to other movies so they can call it a ripoff of something else(I mean isn't everything a ripoff of something else at this point?) then just sit back and enjoy.

Then you have the second bunch of people who when they sit down to watch a movie its like a ritual to them. And they may get really into the movies they watch. They don't want to talk during or discuss the movie while its on and they're not easily distracted to begin with. I fall in the latter group as do a few reviewers here. This movie is not bad at all and it definitely doesn't deserve its low rating.

I mean this isn't a cookie cutter movie, but it also doesn't take a genius to understand...just your attention span and 1 and a half hours of your life.

To possible viewers, no this movie isn't flawed, it isn't a flawed mess either. Everything is right there its just up to you to put the puzzle together. If you only like movies that are cut and dry with an answer for everything then you probably won't like this.

If you want to turn your mind off from the world, then this is a great flick. Don;t watch it with a bunch of friends though because it requires your attention.

6 out of 10 stars is an Honest to goodness revies for this movie that I expected to be in the 5-6.5 range.

Even the hint of style was 'crap' style: you soon get sick of shampoo-advert beautiful young people characters with skin deep characterisation (at least I do, maybe I'm just 'old' at 44). The supposed creepiness/horror does not deliver: minimal gore, no real sense of menace despite building the house up into something that is obviously 'supposed' to be creepy. Compare this to 'Hell House', the old hammer movie with Roddy MacDowell - utterly no contest! Soon you realise that NOTHING about this movie is going to deliver. I doubt whether even the two leads (who are obviously set up to fancy each other) even get round to a good f. to alleviate the pussyfooting boredom.

The end of for me came and half an hour, when the 'heroine' comes across a bloodied corpse hanging upside down. There's a brief flurry of panic where she dashes outside to alert some police who happened to be passing by. despite being believed by no-one, she soon recovers when offered a drink by square-jawed unshaven hero. WTF?? No sane person would want to stay on in that house, and would be shaken up for ages. All credibility lost. Goodbye.

No idea what happened after that, and I totally don't care.

PS: Ha! Having read all the other reviews now, I see I was right: would have been a total waste of time to stay with it to the end: this movie does not deliver on ANY level. I was even right about predicting that the obvious sex with the 'hero' would not develop into at least a good adult scene to relieve the boredom: you get cheated even on this.

All pathetic. Give it a miss.